Former US president Jimmy Carter is decrying the resurgence of racial tensions coinciding with the rise of Donald Trump, warning that the billionaire tycoon’s White House candidacy has tapped a reservoir of “inherent racism.”

Carter told The New York Times on Monday that he was disappointed about a recent spike in racism, “except for one thing: I think the country has been reawakened the last two or three years to the fact that we haven’t resolved the race issue adequately.”

“I think there’s a heavy reaction among some of the racially conscious Republicans against an African American being president,” Carter said.

The 91-year-old politician-turned humanitarian aims to address such issues of when he convenes the New Baptist Covenant Summit 2016 on race relations and social inequality.

Carter is seeking to bring together white, black Hispanic and Asian Baptists to the Atlanta gathering in September in part as a way to heal the racial divide and ease tensions in the country.

Trump inches closer to nomination

Donald Trump, the last Republican standing in the 2016 US presidential race, took a major step toward clinching the party’s nomination with a victory Tuesday in the Washington state primary.

US networks called the race for the New York billionaire shortly after polls closed at 8:00 p.m. (0300 GMT Wednesday).

Early results showed Trump receiving 76 percent of the vote, according to Washington’s secretary of state’s office.

Trump is the party’s presumptive nominee, and while he is not officially the flagbearer yet he is on the cusp.

He had amassed 1,189 delegates prior to Washington state, according to a CNN tally, just 48 delegates short of the 1,237 needed for the nomination.

Washington has 44 delegates up for grabs. Trump will therefore cross the threshold and clinch the nomination on June 7, when California and four other states vote on the final day of the Republican primary contest.